‘THIS IS 40’ AND I AM 40, ARRRGGG!

This is not a film review this is more like a self-reflection after I got knocked off by Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) in the latest Judd Apatow directorial comedy flick ‘This is 40’. I’ve been true to my 2013 self-promise to watch at least 1 movie a week and I had this over a bucket of microwaved cheesy popcorn which I won’t do it again next time, I felt like the sea has gotten up to my head. 

So this movie follows the life of Pete and Debbie, a couple in their 40’s blessed with two unrelenting girls, god, I can see my kids in them fighting over petty things which I suppose shouldn’t be fought over but, you know kids, they just love to … gosssh! And me? Imagine you’re beating up writing deadlines and they’re at the other room whining and pillow fighting, what are you going to do? Move out somewhere in the mountain of tralala or open your mouth out loud and yell? 

I never really had thought about me coming-of-middle-age; I said it’s just a number, but at the back of my mind, Jesus Christ! I still have a lot of things to do and I’m stuck right here raising kids. Sometimes, if not most of the time, understanding the shades of feminism and raising kids under stern religious bend just don’t jive well together, it’s like a square me pegged in a round hole. 

Anyway, when I turned 40 last year, I self-declared a mom’s birthday day-off, I went to Red Cross to donate my dang AB blood, it’s the noblest thing I can think of to mark the day I’ve lived half of my life’s expectancy in this world but it was a failed attempt, my hemoglobin has gone down and was turned down by that bloodless lady at the counter. I thought I would throw a party and dance my head off ‘till the wee hours of the night but in the end traded the funds for a ‘me-time’ and went to the park people watching. I was just crazy, lol. 

Previously I was one of those idealists who want a life to be this and to be that but my coming-of-middle-age made me realize … fine, while society said women should be this and should be that, … who cares … wtf, my reality is far different from the ideal, hence, I shifted course - ‘change and do what I can, leave what I can’t and just live free, nobody gets of this world alive anyway, bahala kayo.’ 

While I don’t want my kids to have mouths as brutal as the kids in this movie, it’s something I’m working being their steward to be good and eventually productive earthlings of this planet at least I’ve done something until they would be mature enough to weigh things on their own whether to get into the convent or to get into the streets and join other radicals in ‘bra-burning.’ 

I’m not so hard about life anymore, now that I’ve come-of-middle-age, I’m assuming that I’m both strong that I’m able to forgive and intelligent enough to be able to ignore whatever fuckin’ non-life threatening issue there is. Coming-of-middle-age is far different from the marriage itself, it’s all about me coming to understand my realities and relationships and work as fair and as with justice and equality to bring together accord and free my head out of stress. Di ba? 

Back to the movie. It’s quiet long for this kind of story. And guess what I’d rather do it myself than find out my husband taking in Viagra for what?- It doesn’t make sense to me. And forgive my words, but just my pure personal opinion – this movie shows the liminalities of American values, the fight between the noble and the not and ‘the should be’ and ‘the should be not’ but over all it was fun!

Posted in Culture | Arts, Feminist Musings